Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Salaam Green

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

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Because in Alabama it’s Robert E. Lee’s Day
by Salaam Green

Doing time in this black body; haven’t gotten much justice

Dark wrists cuffed in front of ancestor’s graves

Bulky coffee colored thighs rubbing against each other

Unliberated muscles poised for flight

Walking on hot pavement barefoot

I resist

Thick skinned knees pivot

Obliquing tired aligned toes from the objected right

Marching in the key of David Baker’s uniformed Incantation

Shouldering the resistance across the Triade of tired biceps

Swaying birthing hips in the warfare of the wind

I Resist

Because in Alabama it’s Robert E. Lee’s Day

Celebrated on the bronzed back brother poet MLK

Eyes catching sight of knitted rebel flags on the chests of maverick mommas

Brandished lips loosed

Blowing the fray from conscientious fingers

Cutting throats with the salty spit swallowed during the “Make America great again repass”

I Resist

Laying wrinkled hands on the last dusty black bible

Bought early in Grandfather’s tenure

Smell the tall man’s cigar smoke lingering from the bent edges

Daring the treasure of any black body to fold

From the revelry of graveled roadblocks
My God, I Resist.